Storm Driver and Callahan are both very powerful and fun. Of course, you should also experiment with some other gun styles, such as autoguns and pulsars.

Shade armor is good, mainly because its damage bonus applies to all enemies. Of course, you will have to choose your status resistances later. The Firefly variant is popular, because advanced players spend a lot of time in Firestorm Citadel. You should also consider Chaos and the 3-star Black Kat helmet. For more information, check out my detailed armor guide.

The Jelly shield line is one of the worst in the game. Also, wolvers may seem hard to you now, but beasts end up being the easiest of the six monster families. So don't be surprised if your view of them changes. Fiends are much harder, for example.

You should get Swiftstrike Buckler (great offense), followed by either Grey Owlite Shield (fire and shock), Dread Skelly Shield (freeze and poison), Omega Shell (extra health), or Volcanic Plate Shield (for Firestorm Citadel). Or, if you think that you might use swords some day, then get Barbarous Thorn Shield (sword offense).

(In case you don't know, there are some oddities to how shields work in this game. First, a shield's damage protections and status resistances don't protect you. They protect the shield itself, to delay its breaking. Second, the breaking is tuned so that status resistance is much more important than damage protection. Also, you should strongly consider shields with offensive bonuses, namely Swiftstrike Buckler and Barbarous Thorn Shield. For more information, you might read the Shieldbearer Guide on the wiki.)